National Post: September 8 2010 Paul Vieira, Financial Post · Wednesday, Sept. 8, 2010 OTTAWA – Any savings Canadians have realized through this period of near-zero interest rates have been all but wiped out by the large amount of debt households have taken on, new research shows. As a result of the rush into home ownership over the past decade that saw housing prices soar, mortgage principal payments as a share of income are now double what they were in the early 1990s, when interest rates were in double-digit territory. But starting in the early 1990s, rates began a downward trend Read more…

Montreal Gazette: September 8 2010 By JONATHAN CHEVREAU, Financial Post September 8, 2010 As Baby Boomers head for the crowded retirement exits, there may not be room for them all. The dominant zeitgeist among that crowd will be pension envy — of the lucky few who stuck with a single employer through most of their working career and now enjoy an old-fashioned, guaranteed-for-life pension plan. There will be two other groups of what we’ll call “pension enviers.” The first is a pensionless crowd that never attempted to save a dime and will either work until 65 or 70 or find a Read more…

If you’re thinking of retiring soon but are not sure if you are financially prepared, you may want to seek the professional guidance of your advisor. in the following story, we learn how financial planning allows a couple to leave their stressful corporate careers behind to start their own part-time consulting business, while ensuring they will have the income to cover their immediate and long-term financial needs.

National Post: September 4 2010 Japan’s Lost Decade, brought on by the bust in the country’s housing and banking boom of the late 1980s, is supposed to be a cautionary tale. Having happened once, economic policymakers have vowed the period of stagnant growth and depressed asset prices that defined the Japanese economy in the ’90s is a phenomenon not to be repeated. But two years removed from the recent financial crisis that spawned the Great Recession, the threat of Japanese-style deflation remains pervasive almost everywhere in the developed world. Nowhere is that more evident than in the United States, where, Read more…

National Post: September 7 2010 Like millions of school-aged children across Canada, Members of Parliament are returning from vacation to find a stack of information waiting for them. With any luck, it won’t be about running in the halls of Parliament and the dress code for Question Period, but instead will contain an earful from entrepreneurs and working people worried about the Harper government’s first major tax increase. That’s right — a tax increase introduced by the federal Conservations. After several courageous decisions on employment insurance — including the long-overdue separation of the EI fund from general government revenue and Read more…

1. The solution they provide does not take into considerations the real dangers she will be facing.

They recommend that she waits till she pays off her mortgage and car loans before she starts saving! Only then will she have extra cash flow to start putting away.
She NEEDS to start building Capital today for her future NOT when she turns 50 years old!!!

In Toronto, a single mother we’ll call Carol, 42, is raising her two children, ages 10 and 13. She nets $3,500 per month after tax from her home-based business and $1,300 in child support for total monthly after-tax income of $4,800.

When actors make a movie, they spend a lot of time rehearsing the next scene. Life is like that – think about how your financial plan is a rehearsal for what’s to come. With a good financial plan, you’ll be prepared for whatever your next scene brings. Without one, you might find your “happily ever after” ending lying on the cutting room floor.

If you’re in your 40s or 50s and caring for both your children and your parents, welcome to the sandwich generation. About one-third of middle-aged Canadians are part of this so-called sandwich generation and more are expected to join their ranks.